Ajax.org – provides a javascript application framework for creating real-time collaborative applications that run in browsers.

AnyChart – provides a Flash based solution to creating interactive, attractive charts.

Axiis- is a Data Visualization Framework for Flex that is designed to let developers and designers to create compelling data visualization solutions. (product is currently in beta)

BirdEye – is a community project to advance the design and development of a comprehensive open source information visualization and visual analytics library for Adobe Flex.

Chart.io – provides a simple tool to create charts and dashboards from data sets.

Chronoscope – tool will allow you to visualize large numbers of data points. The tool provides a Javascript API and Google Visualization API.

Degrafa – is a declarative graphics framework for creating data visualization and mapping.

Dundas – "Dundas has a wide range of data visualization solutions for Microsoft technologies." The product family includes: charts, gauges, maps, calendars, and digital dashboards.

Flare – "Flare is an ActionScript library for creating visualizations that run in the Adobe Flash Player. From basic charts and graphs to complex interactive graphics, the toolkit supports data management, visual encoding, animation, and interaction techniques."

Flex Monster – provides an internet application designed to view, analyze and manage multidimensional data online.

Fusion Charts – offers a wide variety of 2D/3D interactive chart types that can be used in web and desktop applications.

Gapminder – provides worldwide statistical data in an engaging interactive format.

GeoAnalytics Visualization (GAV) – "is a component toolkit developed by Linkoping University for dynamically exploring time-varying, geographically referenced and multivariate attributes simultaneously and to enable the capture of the interactive visual process into information packages"

Google Chart API – can generate many kinds of charts that can be embedded into web based applications.

Google Motion Charts – allows you to create dynamic charts to explore several indicators over time utilizing a visualization API. The charts are rendered as Flash videos.

JFree Chart – provides a Java chart library for developers to aid in the creation of high quality charts for a variety of applications.

JPowered – provides PHP graphing scripts that assist with the generation and embedding of graphs and charts into PHP applications.

Kap IT Labs Diagrammer and Visualizer – this tool provides a ready-to-use yet highly customizable multi-layout data visualization and diagramming for Adobe Flex and Air.

Many Eyes – provides a collection of data visualizations. On the Many Eyes site you can view and discuss visualizations and data sets, create visualizations from existing data sets, and upload your own data sets. Note: you will have to create an account to upload your own data.

MilkChart – a simple to use, open source library for transforming table data into a char. Note: this library uses HTML5 tags and is only supported in browsers other than IE.

Omgili – lets you measure and compare the percentage of a term out of the total number of discussions Omgili covers on specific dates. You can also embed the graph inside any web page.

Open Flash Charts – is an open sources Flash based chart generation tool. The site provides packaged software and a clear set of tutorials that assist in getting started with the product.

PlotKit – "is a Chart and Graph Plotting Library for Javascript. It has support for HTML Canvas and also SVG via Adobe SVG Viewer and native browser support." The product is fully documented and there is a quick tutorial to get you started.

Prefuse – is a Java-based toolkit for building interactive information visualization applications. (The toolkit is currently in beta.)

Protovis – allows you to create custom vies of data with simple marks such as bars and dots. The bars and dots properties encode data, allowing inheritance, scales and layout to simplify construction of graphs.

R Project for Statistical Computing – is a "free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS."

Swivel – provides a web-based data graphing solutions. Swivel is free for public data, and charges a monthly fee to people who want to use it in private."

Tableau Public – provides a free data visualization tool that can be embedded into websites or the shared.

UUorld – "(pronounced "world") provides an immersive mapping environment, high-quality data, and critical analysis tools."

VisiFire – "provides a set of data visualization controls powered by Microsoft Silverlight and WPF. It can be used with ASP, ASP.net, SharePoint, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Python, Ruby or in standalone HTML pages."

Other Objects

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

Amaztype, a typographic book search, collects the information from Amazon and presents it in the form of keyword you’ve provided. To get more information about a given book, simply click on it. Similar idea is being used by Flickrtime. The tool uses Flickr API to present the uploaded images in real-time. The images form the clock which shows the current time.

CrazyEgg lets you explore the behavior of your visitors with a heat map. More popular sections, which are clicked more often, are highlighted as “warm” – in red color.

Elastic Lists demonstrates the “elastic list” principle for browsing multi-faceted data structures. You can click any number of list entries to query the database for a combination of the selected attributes. The approach visualizes relative proportions (weights) of metadata by size and visualizes characteristics of a metadata weight by brightness.

Google Visualization API Gadget Gallery

Munterbund showcases the results of research graphical visualization of text similarities in essays in a book.

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. The size of data blocks is defined by their popularity at the moment.

Visual Complexity – "intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks."

Voyage is an RSS-feeder which displays the latest news in the “gravity area”. News can be zoomed in and out. The navigation is possible with a timeline.

Websites as graphs. An HTML DOM Visualizer Applet, which displays sites as graphs depending on the amount of links, tables, div tags, images, forms and other tags.

16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools

The Portable Document Format (PDF) was created to allow designers to share content with formatting intact. Unfortunately, at the beginning, the features that allowed a PDF to look a certain way, also tended to prevent users from accessing the content with Assistive Technology. To combat this problem, Adobe worked to improve the accessibility of the PDF by adding features for those who are accessing documents and also adding features for those who are creating documents. Both pieces are vital – content designers must create Adobe files with access in mind. Users need to be aware of tools and techniques for accessing files in ways that are most efficient for them as individuals.

Creating Accessible Documents

Adobe PDF files are created by scanning a printed page or creating a PDF from an image file, or converting/Distilling/Combining existing electronic files. Ideally PDF will be created from accessible source files. Some recommendations for assuring source files are accessible is to:

• Use headings (don’t just change font size)
• Use tables appropriately (for data– use columns for layout)
• Avoid text boxes
• Add alt tags to images

Document Conversion

• Use the Acrobat tool installed within the source application were possible. (Acrobat 8 and above will install a conversion tool in most office type applications on installation.)
• Assure that the convert document info, add links, enable accessibility and allow reflow, etc. are enabled in Acrobat.

If scanned document images are being converted to PDFs, then additional steps are may be required to make the file accessible. When creating the PDF document:

1. Open the document image in Acrobat
2. Run OCR by clicking on Advanced>Recognize Text Using OCR
3. Add tags to images, tables, etc
4. Touch up reading order by clicking on Go to Advanced>Accessibility>Touch Up, then click on Show Order Panel

To improve accessibility of a PDF file:

1. Evaluate the original document
   • If it is created from another document – does that document have structural tags?
   • If it is created from an image – has OCR (Optical Character Recognition) been run
2. Run the accessibility check
   1. Open the document in Acrobat
   2. Go to Advanced>Accessibility>Quick Check (Ctrl+Shift+6)
3. Make repairs as needed
   • Some repairs are best made in the source document if possible (tags, headings, etc)
   • Sometimes settings need to be changed prior to conversion to PDF
   • Some changes must be made in Adobe (touch up reading order, document language, etc)
4. Run the accessibility check after making repairs to ensure that no problems are found

Using Acrobat Accessibility Features

Users must have the free Adobe Reader program to access a PDF file. Within Adobe Reader a user can then make use of several convenient features to improve access to the content assuming the PDF was created with accessibility in mind in the first place.

Adobe Reader can read text out loud

1. Make sure the document contains text to be read
2. Go to the View pull-down menu
3. Choose Read Out Loud

Adobe will read in a choice of voices

• Go to the Edit menu and select Preferences or use the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl +K)
• Select Reading
• Uncheck "Use Default Voice"
• Select voice of choice (additional voices can be acquired from a variety of sources and loaded onto your computer)

Adobe can read at faster and slower rates

• Go to the Edit menu and select Preferences or use the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl +K)
• Select Reading
• Uncheck "Use Default Speech Attributes"
• Adjust the Rate of speech

Adobe has reading order options

• Go to the Edit menu and select Preferences or use the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl +K)
• Select Reading
• Click on the "Reading Order:" drop down arrow. hen click on your preferred reading order.
  • Tagged documents afford the best reading
  • "Infer reading order from document" works well but can be slower

Adobe lets users replace document colors

• Go to the Edit menu and select Preferences or use the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl +K)
• Select Accessibility
• Check "Replace Document Colors"
• Next select the options that will make reading the document on screen easier. Note: this does not change the original document and setting will only be valid for the computer on which they are set.

Adobe also has a reflow option

Click the [Control] and [4] keys to turn the reflow option on. This will eliminate Horizontal Scrolling when text size is increased and is also useful for magnification or small handheld devices.

Adobe has and automatic scrolling feature. To turn it on:

• Click the [Control], [Shift] and [H] keys to start and stop scrolling
• Click the Arrow up and down keys to slow down and speed up the scrolling

Other Assistive Software

Free screenreading alternatives

• NVDA – NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system offering synthetic speech and Braille with multi language support and the ability to run entirely from a USB drive.
• System Access to Go – Online screenreader, free, available from any Internet-connected Windows machine
• Thunder – Thunder is award-winning free screenreader talking software for people with little or no sight. It works well with Windows 7, Vista or XP.
• Web Anywhere – WebAnywhere is a web-based screen reader for the web. It requires no special software to be installed on the client machine and, therefore, enables blind people to access the web from any computer that has a sound card.

Text based browsers and screenreader emulators

• Fangs – This Mozilla Firefox extension creates a textual representation of a web page similar to how the page would be read by a modern screen reader.
• FireVox – Fire Vox is an open source, freely available talking browser extension for the Firefox web browser. Think of it as a screen reader that is designed especially for Firefox. In addition to the basic features that are expected of screen readers, such as being able to identify headings, links, images, etc. and providing navigational assistance, Fire Vox provides support for MathML and CSS speech module properties. It also works on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.
• Lynx – Lynx is a fully-featured World Wide Web (WWW) client for users running cursor-addressable, character-cell display devices (e.g., vt100 terminals, vt100 emulators running on PCs or Macs, or any other character-cell display).

Filereading options

• Balabolka – Balabolka is a Text-To-Speech (TTS) program. All computer voices installed on your system are available to Balabolka. The on-screen text can be saved as a WAV, MP3, OGG or WMA file. The program can read the clipboard content, view the text from DOC, RTF, PDF, ODT, FB2 and HTML files, customize font and background colour, control reading from the system tray or by the global hotkeys. Balabolka uses various versions of Microsoft Speech API (SAPI); it allows to alter a voice’s parameters, including rate and pitch. The user can apply a special substitution list to improve the quality of the voice’s articulation.
• Read Please – ReadPlease 2003 (Free Edition) offers full support for all Microsoft voices, reads text via Windows clipboard from any program, Adjustable voice speed (rate) and more…
• CliCk Speak (firefox add-on) – CLiCk, Speak is designed for sighted users who want text-to-speech functionality. It has a simplified, mouse driven interface that is designed to be easy for users familiar with point-and-click graphical user interfaces. It works on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux; and Fire Vox has multilingual support, making it great for users who are trying to learn a foreign language and need to hear foreign language web sites read out to them for practice.
• Power Talk – PowerTalk is a free program that automatically speaks any presentation or slide show running in Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows. Speech is provided by the synthesized computer voices that are provided with Windows 7, Vista and XP, and other voices are available. PowerTalk uses PowerPoint supplied with Microsoft Office to show the presentation.
• Word Talk – A free Windows text-to-speech plugin for Microsoft Word. It will speak the text of the document and will highlight it as it goes. It contains a talking dictionary and a text-to-mp3 converter.

Modified Input Methods

• Click-N-Type – is a virtual keyboard designed for anyone with a disability that prevents him or her from typing on a physical computer keyboard. So long as the person can control a mouse, trackball or other pointing device, he or she can send keystrokes to virtually any Windows application or DOS application that can run within a DOS window. Click-N-Type is a 32 bit application that requires Windows 95 or later.
• Let Me Type – LetMeType is word prediction software. Running in the background, it analyzes what you type. After it has collected enough information, it can guess a word after you have typed only the first two or three letters. A list of the most probable words is displayed, and you can select one with a single keystroke or just continue typing. LetMeType allows you to load your own dictionaries and the program will work with most applications, offering completion suggestionsin most any program you happen to be working in.

Display Adjustment tools

• CLCSTAR (Firefox Add-on) – allows users to easily set up preferences for how they want pages presented to them in Firefox. Features include enlarging images, changing font size, foreground/background color, and style, enhancing the cursor focus indicator, adjusting line and word spacing, disabling stylesheets, and disabling background images.
• iZoom Web – is an advanced, voicing screen magnifier that loads from a web site. It will only work while you are connected to the Web. It has features that compare with popular commercial products such as ZoomText and MAGic.

Developer Tools for Browsers

• The Web Accessibility Toolbar for IE
• The WAVE toolbar for Firefox
• The Web Developer Toolbar
• The Web Accessibility Toolbar is available from: http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-about.html

The following video provides a interesting look in to the progression of technology enabled information sources and the changing media landscape.

• What impact do you think this will have on the way that we educate?
• What skillsets will tomorrows graduates need to have?

Based on research conducted by Karl Fisch, Director of Technology at Arapahoe High School, Centennial, Colorado, and Scott McLeod, Associate Professor, Iowa State University

A Few Ideas…

In the following video the New Brunswick, Canada Department of Education system provides a vision of how we can change the educational landscape the keep students engaged and prepare them for the work environments that they will be entering.

Can these ideas be implemented in higher education? If so, how?

The blocks for Winter Solstice were hand pieced and machine quilted. The silks represent the Alpine glow generated from fresh winter snow and the dark batiks the night sky on a crisp clear winter night.

In the following TED talk Ethan Zuckerman, blogger and technologist gives a thought provoking talk about how we connect, or in many cases miss connecting with the world view available on the Internet. 

The following are a couple of the resources mentioned in his presentation that I found worth a closer look.

• Global Voices – “…an international community of bloggers who report on blogs and citizen media from around the world.”
• Oxford Internet Institute – “The Oxford Internet Institute was founded as a department of the University of Oxford in 2001, as an academic centre for the study of the societal implications of the Internet.”

Now that you have listened to Zuckerman’s recommendations and explored a few resources — will you  expand your world view? Will you encourage your students to explore new resources?

I recommend that the three rubrics provided at the end of this section be modified to address the method that you will be employing to assess professional portfolios.

Each of the rubrics is divided into four categories and five performance areas.

Categories

• Novice – Lacks required components; is weak in selected components, unprofessional demonstration, representative of poor work
• Apprentice – Includes most of the required components, limited professionalism demonstrated
• Journeyman – Satisfies expectations, includes required components, representative of professional work
• Expert – Clearly outstanding product, includes extra components, goes beyond the expectations, representative of exemplary work

Performance – The composite score of the three rubrics that the portfolio:

• Exceeds Expectations (144-160) – Portfolio is outstanding, reflects extra components and exceeds normal expectations. Candidate should be scheduled for oral defense.
• Meets Expectations (120-143) – Portfolio satisfies expectations, includes required components, and is representative of professional work. Candidate should be scheduled for oral defense.
• Minimal Success (105-123) – Portfolio includes most of the required components, lacks professionalism. Candidate should make appropriate revisions to the product then resubmit for review and assessment.
• Needs Improvement (96-107) – Portfolio lacks required components, weak in components illustrated, unprofessional presentation techniques utilized. Candidate should receive remedial instruction and guidance in making the required revisions. Where appropriate candidate should repeat the Portfolio Design activity.
• Unsatisfactory (95 or less) – Portfolio is incomplete in required and selected components, incorporates unprofessional presentation techniques, demonstrates inferior work, and is unacceptable. Work must be redone with significant improvements. Candidate must repeat the Portfolio Design activity.

Rubrics

Portfolio Media and Design Elements Rubric

Content Assessment Rubric

Professionalism Assessment Rubric

Adaptive release allows instructors and course designers to release course content based on rules that they create; in other words, you can control what content is made available to which students and under what conditions they are allowed to see it. Rules can be created for individuals or groups, based on criteria related to date, time, assessment scores or attempts, and the review status of other items in the course. For example, you can:

• Allow students to view a particular unit or resource only after they have attained a minimum score on a quiz.
• Share different supplementary materials with groups of students working on different projects.
• Share different schedule materials and syllabi with students in different sections but using the same course shell.
• Restrict students from joining a discussion forum until they have reviewed relevant course materials.
• Make the next assignment available only to those who have read a specific material.

The following options are available with the Adaptive Release tool.

• Adaptive Release – used to create basic rules for an item. In this tool only one rule per item may be created.
• Adaptive Release: Advanced – this feature allows instructors to create multiple rules per item. For example, if different rules apply for different Groups in a course this feature should be used.
• Adaptive Release and Review Status: User Progress – this page displays details on the visibility of a content item and the Adaptive Release rules pertaining to it.

Adaptive Release: Basic

An Adaptive Release rule consists of a set to criteria that defines the visibility of a content item to users. Criteria are the parts that make up the rule. For example, date and membership are two different criteria types. Each content item may have multiple rules and each rule may consist of multiple criteria. To view an item, a user must meet all criteria before the item is made available.
For example, the instructor may add an Assignment to a course.

• One rule for this Assignment may allow all users in Group 1 to view the Assignment after a specific date. For this rule you would set date and membership criteria.
• Another rule for this assignment may allow all users in Group 2 to view the Assignment once they had passes Quiz 1. This rule would require you to set membership and gradebook criteria.
• A third way of using Adaptive Release is to create rules that ensure that students read a piece of content before proceeding to a test, activity, or new unit. For this type of rule you would enable the review status for the content, and Review Status criteria in the Adaptive Release rules.

In the PDF documents listed below will step you through how the setup these three type of rules.

• Restricting the viewing of an assignment after a specific date PDF document

• Restricting assignment view based on quiz score PDF document

• Setting and releasing materials based on review status PDF document

• Creating rules for individual students

Adaptive Release and Review Status: User Progress

Blackboard allows you to track whether learners have met the review rules established for activities within your courses. The feature is activated and reviewed from the Manage area for activities and content areas.

The following tutorials will step you through enabling review tracking and reviewing the tracking status.

• Enable review tracking PDF document
• Reviewing the tracking status

Adaptive Release: Advanced

Advanced adaptive release allows you to create multiple rules for a content item. If a student fulfills one or more rules in the collection, the content item will be made available. Each rule may consist of one or more criteria; a student must satisfy all criteria to satisfy the rule. For example, if a learning unit has three rules attached to it, then a student must satisfy all the criteria in Rule 1, or all the criteria in Rule 2, or all criteria in Rule 3, to be able to see the unit.

• Adding Advanced Adaptive Release rules

Copying Rules

If you plan on applying multiple rules to a given content item it may be quicker to copy an Adaptive Release rules instead of creating a new one from scratch. (Note: a rule from one content item may not be copied to another content item.)

The following tutorial steps you through copy process.

• Copying Rules

Editing and Deleting Rules

Rules are managed and modified from the Adaptive Release or Adaptive Release: Advanced pages. The name change and delete rule functions are accessed through the Adaptive Release: Advanced page.

The following tutorials step you through each of the rule management functions.

• Editing Rules PDF document

• Deleting Rules

Recommendations

Please exercise caution when copying, exporting, or importing items from old courses that were previously associated with Adaptive Release rules. It is possible to prematurely release exams and assignments when copying content that have associated rules.

To assure that previously deployed Adaptive Release items remain unavailable in your new course, follow these steps:

1. Make sure each item (i.e., exam, quiz, assignment, etc) is unavailable in the old course before using the course copy tool.
2. Copy the materials into the course before making the course available to students.
3. Check the options on each item you do not wish to display.
4. Rewrite the Adaptive Release rules on the course items hat cover the new section of students and current dates.
5. Reset the availability options on the items and/or course.

You may want to create PDF documents and/or portfolios that allow viewers to comment and respond to its content. The commenting and markup tools allow you to insert detailed comments, highlight, replace, insert, and delete text, and use graphics to comment on documents.

If you enable commenting rights in a PDF, instructors and peers can offer feedback even if they do not have a copy of Adobe Acrobat. Enabling these rights allow viewers’ using Adobe Reader 8 or later to participate in reviews of that PDF.

When a PDF with commenting rights opens in Reader, it includes a document message bar and commenting tools that are otherwise unavailable.

The PDF Portfolio features in Acrobat make it easy to create an engaging presentation package. When you first open the PDF Portfolio tool, an edit pane of the right side of the work area will be displayed.

The first thing that you will want to do when creating a new portfolio is choose a layout. To choose a layout for a portfolio:

1. In the Edit PDF Portfolio window, click on the Choose A Layout section.
2. Next select one of the basic layout options:
   1. Basic Grid: Arrange files as thumbnails with text.
   2. On An Image: Arrange files on top of any image you want. Use the Pick Image button to select the image to use as a background for your portfolio.
   3. Revolve: Bring one file into focus at a time.
   4. Sliding Row: Display several files in a row.

The following tutorials will step you through how to set up and edit portfolio options and content areas.

• Adding a Welcome page
• Adding portfolio headers
• Adding headers and footers to documents

Ran across an interesting YouTube video that discusses the intrinsic motivators that drive employees to by successful, but when I viewed it I found myself thinking about how to design/redesign learning activities and modules so that they would increase learner engagement and skill attainment.

The video is embedded below for your viewing. I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on the content and applicability the higher education.